Media Reviews

A.V. Club Though the broad strokes might seem familiar, at every turn Lacey resists conventional developments...What’s most impressive is Lacey’s restraint—like Pew, she remains an observer, withholding judgment without sparing any detail. A fabulist tale with no prescribed moral, Pew has the thrum of a foreshock, setting the reader on edge with the unlikely omens of hospitality and attrition.

Los Angeles Review of Books The most impressive feat Lacey has accomplished in her newest novel is the ambitious construction of the narrator...a work that evokes the same presumptions and privileges in the reader as it does in its characters — particularly those of the townsfolk...For anyone who values literature that tests commonly held standards regarding what a character should be and how they are developed, this is a book not to be missed. Its success at pushing beyond preconceived ideas about a character’s identity and narratorial credence will be discussed among writers for years to come.

New York Times What works in this novel is its Kafkaesque sense, through Pew, of free-floating anxiety and mortification of a sort that is impossible to define and thus impossible to soothe. Pew will not be characterized, interpreted, diagnosed or annotated. Pew seems to drift, like the planchette on a Ouija board...This novel walks a high wire between pretentiousness and a kind of cool, disembodied unease. For me, it fell too often into the goo pit... Lacey is such a talented writer that she casts a certain spell, even when that spell is distant and difficult to tune in.

The Guardian (UK) [A] puzzle of a novel...Lacey has always been an economical writer, and she is as taut as she’s ever been here...These monologues make sections of the book read like Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy blended with the creeping unease of Ari Aster’s horror film Midsommar...Pew is a confusing fable – there’s too much messy realism in it for its lesson to be easily understood – but it is within its messier reaches, and its concerns with inequality and prejudice, that its boldest and most brilliant effects are found.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review) [A] haunting fable about morality and self-delusion...Lacey—spare and elegant as ever—creates a story that feels at the same time mythological and arrestingly like life. Darkly playful; a warning without a moral

Library Journal (starred review) Working with the spiritual and social notions of the stranger and the other, Lacey creates an amorphously Christlike figure who comes to represent whatever people want to see, good or bad. With echoes of some of Shirley Jackson's work, this is a complex, many-faceted fable about religion, hypocrisy, forgiveness, and how society defines social identity.

Publishers Weekly (starred review) [P]owerful...The action builds toward a mysterious Forgiveness Festival and a memorable climax with disturbing echoes of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' unveiled in a harrowing crescendo of call and response. Lacey's talent shines in this masterful work, her best yet.

Booklist Lacey's quietly provocative novel is brilliantly composed. She shines a light on the complexity of humans and the dangers of judging and categorizing others based on appearance, as Pew's ambiguity reveals the true nature of her characters.

 Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under I consumed Pew. It is the electric charge we need.

 Jonathan Lethem, author of The Feral Detective The mercurial and electric Catherine Lacey has now conjured up an of-the-moment fable of trauma and projection – one part Kaspar Hauser, one part James Purdy, and one part Rachel Cusk. The pages shimmer with implication.

Reader Reviews

Books with similar themes

• Literary Fiction
  
• South, USA
  
• Contemporary